Change in ability with age

You shouldn't have told chess.com. We will all beat you at chess now.

at 78 my uscf has actually increased. but I take bye's when Ican to catch a nap.

Yes, and this is why everyone thinks they are the outlier. Well, that and the fact that their parents told them they were special.

  From my personal experience, actively playing club and tournament chess even at moderately advanced age slows decline down greatly . . . indeed I gained about 480 points between age 42 - 46, but then I stayed away from the game for a long, long period and now my blitz game is zilch; and I cannot play well at all under fast time controls (game in 30 minutes or less).  I think my online chess.com rating is about 1645 which is down almost 300 points from the peak.  It's like a lot of things:  USE it or LOSE it.  That's why when it comes to longevity, fitness and health:  my recommendation is this for all young people . . . do NOT ever let yourself get a day out of shape.  It becomes so much tougher to get back what you've lost.  Case in point, I used to run marathons . . . now it's hard to jog 1.5 miles.

I played Chess as a teenager at my local club and probably reached a 13-1400  type rating although not competing at any tournaments. 

At about 40 (I'm now 43) I started playing a lot of chess against my phone and then online at ICC and Chess.com. I joined my local club again after 25 year absense and started watching videos and doing tactic and lesson training. 

I really can't remember how well I calculated as a teenager. For me Chess is a passion where my rating goes up and down. The downs feel simply horrible and the ups feel nervous for me .. as Im worried about the next down! But in terms of rating progression, I started 2-3 years ago playing online at about 12-1300 and ended up now about 1450-1550 for Blitz usually. So my rating has steadily but very slowly increased whilst regualarly crashing and then spiking.. its interesting. 

Conceptually I think I realise where I need to improve.. getting my brain to do it during a game is another story. Neural plasticity seems to be the common term used for learning ability. As we age the plasticity can get less and less .. err .. plastic? 

Anyway I think I can stil improve some more! I will probably never be master-level at Chess as that is almost certainly a combination of many hours of study time (which I dont necessarily have) and also a natural ability (DNA influenced).. 

I'm a black belt in Judo and have trained since I was 6 and I've seen many beginnners start training and its obvious they will only ever improve to a certain degree .. 

But what of it?? We live once and we strive in many areas. If I had a choice of being a top master-level chess player .. or a guitarist with the abilities of Stevie Ray Vaughan .. I'd choose the music every time :)

Peace and good Chess everyone.

"Aging" is a factor, but it is not the primary factor. When you are young you have unlimited time and zero responsibilities. New ideas present you with a feeling of wonder, keeping motivation high eith little effort. This creates an environment very conducive to rapid chess improvement.

As you get older, you add more to your plate in life. You get a job. You fall in love. You get a promotion at work. You have children. Family members get sick and require you to help them for years at a time. You have zero free time. You don't get enough sleep. You are tired most of the time. But you have more to accomplish than ever. Your significant other wants a better home. You need more money, so you work even more. Because you are so busy, you don't have time to prepare healthy food, so you eat junk from fast food restaurants. Now you have even less energy. This cycle continues, and people think this is just normal aging.

The truth is, we do get slightly slower mentally and physically as we age, probably starting at about 25 years old. But if you work hard to stay in good health, and to maintain an organized life to reduce stress, there is no reason you cannot continue to improve at chess until you are very, very old. At some point your health problems will be too great, and you won't have the fight to improve. For some that comes when they are 35, and others when they are 80. At some point, you prefer a shot of vodka over analyzing a game of chess.

Life isnt futile unless you think it is .. negativity is futile .. try to stay positve.

Whip_kitten you haven't played a single game here .. troll off.. 

I don't think age has a great bearing on your chess play unless you are really old. It's always about time and money. If I had all the time and money in the world, I am very sure I can go all the way to at least FM level....I have improved my level of play since the past 10 years although I hardly can afford to spend the time for chess on a daily basis. Chess just takes too MUCH time. Way too much time. Time which equals to money. You can look at Topalov and Anand, both playing such high level chess although they are 40s; both have no money worries and are chess professionals.

Barring strokes and whatnot, mental functioning falls off much more slowly as we age than bodily functioning.

Otherwise how to explain Korchnoi's victory at 79 over Caruana at 19? There is no sport in the world where an elderly veteran could even begin to compete with one of the top 19 year-olds on the planet.

I suspect that seniors can make surprising gains in chess if they want it bad enough and train hard enough and smart enough.

In fact I think it's true of most people. I dont't think this means everyone can become a GM but certainly 1800, maybe higher. As Debistro notes, chess training takes a lot of time.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with playing chess for the fun of it and not for rating points.

And she's got an opening named after her!

You just made it naughty!

I am 77 and rtr1129 really pointed out the fact that age and the very would be a detriment to thinking, and health would come into the picture. It is apparent now that when I am playing a game I try to anylize different variation. So as I play them I make a copy of the and save them in my notes. Then I go to a different variation and many time I do three or four maybe deeper than when I was younger. I save them so that when I come back to the game I can look to see which one I have to follow.

Lo and behold the silly game opponent found another variation that I didn't even considered. Seems like when I do the variation from his point of view it turns out it is my point of view that I make the moves and not his. Pheew . . It was all in a waste of time. As far as health I have no health problems, I bowl three times a week and have bowling matches on weekends, My mind is active and I take Jr. College course that I like just because I want to. Money isn't a problem. Eating  is great. Women that is a treat. I am writing my memoirs again in HTML /CSS form for Webpages. Have three grandchildren that keep me busy I can't find enought time to rest enough but i'd rather be doing something.

I know though I can't seem to make an upward movement in chess. Seem like it's a gradual lowering of my rating. Don't know how to stop it. Wish I could find someone to play blindfold chess I think that is my key to improvement. Tactics I find so boring. Over and Overthings that don;t seem to matter.

Just wait until you guys get up there. Then you can actually write about when you get older and what happens to your thinking. Too bad youth is wasted on the young.

I'm 56 now, and play better than I did when younger I think (I was an ok club player then, much the same now but know a bit more from being on this site, tactics trainer, chess mentor and whatnot).  So there is hope for us all.  As I joined this site to try and keep my brain from slowing up, it seems to have worked so far.  Probably harder once you hit 70s and 80s, but maybe some members on here might know otherwise?

Humourless and sexist?  What a catch!

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback so far.

But I was asking for opinions/experience info about age/chess ability, not a childish argument in the comments, so just asking that you stop, regardless of where it originated.

I thought it was how it was spelled? Or spelt? I don't know anymore!

My chessboard is old...